His Obedient Servant
by nightwalker3
Summary: Shredder never could have done it without her. That was Karai's burden to bear. A SAINW story.


**Note:** This is set during the episode _Same As it Never Was_ and attempts to fill in some of the gaps. I have attempted to stay as close as possible to the timeline we were given in the episode, but there was a lot of wiggle room.

* * *

**Obedient Servant**

The great Lord Shredder is the most feared of all men.

He is the unknown. None but his loyal clan and servants have ever seen his face. Few now live who ever knew his name. He is rarely seen in person. The Lord Shredder is the darkness in the back of the mind, the shadow seen from the corner of the eye. His name is synonymous with fear and terror, and it is nothing less than terror that he inspires in the millions who live and die at his whim.

But as the Lord Shredder is feared, it is Karai who is hated.

She is no mystery. Her face and voice address the people daily in her father's name. Chaplin's KaraiBots still police the same towns and cities that decades earlier they razed to the ground. Lurching metal women with her face and voice, giants made of titanium and steel, treated with rust-resistant coating not to save them from the rain, but to protect from the corrosive effects of the blood they spilled.

Karai is her father's heir, his advisor, his general, his handmaiden. She is his executioner. She is his whipping boy. Her father chose the battles, but she gave the orders for the fighting to commence. Her father demanded tribute, but she is the one who came to collect. Her father ordered the executions, but she is the one who stood before the masses as the blades fell.

All men fear the unknown. But Karai is familiar to them, and familiarity has bred in them nothing but contempt.

Karai does not hide from their hate. She does not challenge it. She does not even regret it.

It is, after all, the legacy she has built for herself.

* * *

Honor is something that has weighed heavily on her shoulders these many years.

Not so, in the beginning. She remembers a time when her father's will was her wish, when his every success was her joy, when his belief was her honor. She remembers the man who led her off the streets and taught her to defend herself. How could she not swear her loyalty to the man who had given her everything she had?

And if she could not always understand what he asked of her, then surely it was a fault in her own intelligence, a lapse in her own leadership and judgment that she must correct.

She doubted him for the first time in Beijing.

It was not the last time.

* * *

"Spread out." Karai's voice was not loud, but it was powerful and her words echoed through the sprawling laboratory. "I want every room and storage facility searched. I want an inventory made of the supplies, weaponry and experiments being kept here. Kill the guards. Bring me any surviving staff so that they may be questioned."

The ninja scattered at her orders and Karai waited in what seemed to be the main laboratory. There were computers there, a system with a meticulous security protocol. Karai had already sent for Chaplin and two of his best computer technicians – his 'Hack and Slash team' as he called them. Computers were not her area of strength. She would wait for the experts rather than risk destroying valuable data.

The base was an impressive structure. Even knowing that Stockman was betraying them, it had still taken her time to realize that the scientist wasn't slipping onto a boat in the Hudson or meeting with a submarine of some sort, but entering a subterranean base built under the river.

It should not have taken her so long, Karai acknowledged, her sloppiness weighing her shoulders. She had made assumptions about what Stockman was up to and that had cost her time.

But it was done. Stockman had led them to this unknown enemy and her ninja had done the rest. Her father would be pleased to know his enemy was no longer a factor.

Chaplin would be pleased to know he was now her father's chief scientist. May he show more ingenuity and more allegiance than his hero had.

Karai paused to examine one of the bodies lying at her feet. A middle-aged, non-descript man with strong features; he had gone down fighting with a ferocity she had not expected. Not merely a scientist, certainly. It had taken Karai herself entering the battle to finally bring this man down. She studied his bloodied face carefully. She thought, from Stockman's shrieked confessions, that this one might be the leader. Bishop, she thought. Wooing Stockman from her father's side had likely seemed an accomplishment at the time. Karai wondered if the man had realized the foolishness of his actions before he died.

"A man who betrays his master once will betray his master twice," she murmured to the corpse.

Something caught her eye and she nudged the man's arm slightly, lifting it on the toe of her boot. A white, plastic card had been hidden by his hand and Karai stooped to examine it. It was the size of a credit card, a magnetic stripe down the side. She picked it up carefully, avoiding as much of the blood as possible and flipped it over.

It was an identification badge bearing the face of the man who lay dead at her feet. "Doctor Bishop," she said aloud. Her father would be most pleased.

The card bore the man's name, photo, a string of numbers that must have been some kind of identification, or clearance authorization, and a barcode. Karai wiped the blood off on the back of Bishop's labcoat and eyed the card thoughtfully. Handy. The man would surely have had clearance to the entire base. There were already rooms her ninja had found they could not access; just to her right, for example, they had found a locked door that resisted all their efforts to open it. Karai had resigned herself to the use of explosives. But this would be easier and without the risk of destroying the equipment and experiments that they were sent to confiscate.

Karai tried not to think very hard about Bishop's experiments. The scientist was not a well man, she had decided. He and Stockman had deserved each other.

She heard her reinforcements arriving as she stood, the card held between her fingers. Her ninja were silent, but Chaplin and his scientists were elephants in a roomful of cats. "Doctor," she called, without turning. "You are late."

"Sorry, Mistress Karai." The scientist sounded distracted as he entered the laboratory. "I was busy working with the new Utrom scientists your ninjas captured for me. We're having trouble adjusting the control protocols."

Karai studied the face of the man on the card so she would not think of the Utroms enslaved in Chaplin's labs. They were monsters and oppressors, to be sure, but Chaplin's control protocols made her uneasy. "Begin your examination of the computer system. I want a report within the hour."

"Yes, Mistress Karai." She didn't bother turning to face him. The idiotic adoration in his voice made her uncomfortable, the lasciviousness in his eyes would be worse. She would have to do something about him, she decided. He was too valuable to her father, especially now that Stockman had betrayed them, to be gotten rid of, but she had other resources at her disposal. Chaplin's ridiculous infatuation would be stopped. Immediately.

"Remain and guard Dr. Chaplin," she ordered.

The locked room they had tried to access earlier has a keypad with a card reader. She swiped the card and smiled with satisfaction as the light on the keypad flashed red, then orange, then green, and the handle turned beneath her hand.

An examination room, she realized, or perhaps a dissection room, considering some of what she had seen already. The room was small compared to the main lab, with tile floors and metal walls. Shelves held vials and tubes, a sink and counter were set against the far wall, and a single metal examination table was set in the center of the room.

It was not empty.

Bright lights had flashed on as she entered the room, set to a motion sensor most likely and they showed her the unmoving shape on the table. Surprise made her pause for a moment, then she made herself move warily closer. She was ready for an attack, but none came. The body on the table was still.

But not dead, she saw. As she approached she could see the slight rise and fall of the chest, hear the slightest rasp of breathing. Still alive then, she thought and felt a flash of pity. Perhaps it would have been better otherwise.

She had a choice to make in that moment: To keep the prisoner alive and turn him over to her father, or to eliminate him as a witness herself.

He watched her the entire time. He did not flinch as she raised her sword.

Later she wiped her sword clean, trying to ignore the way her hands shook. Only then would she realize that she had never even considered the third option.

* * *

Stockman escaped, as he was wont to do. Her father was overall pleased.

"You have done well, Karai," he informed her from his seat.

Karai knelt before him and bowed her head. "I am your obedient daughter," she said.

* * *

Karai remembers a small town, somewhere in the north. She doesn't remember its name because there are too many to remember them all. This one only stands out in her memory because of the children.

The town had defied her father, had offered succor to the broken remnants of their country's military and had begun stockpiling weaponry. They were remote, distant from the cities, even from the main roads. They had hoped the wilderness would protect them.

Wilderness was no deterrent to a ninja, and Karai did not need a road to find them and carry out her father's justice.

The war had carried on for several years longer than her father had wanted. He had hoped, she knew, for a decisive victory over the Earth, uniting all under his rule. He had expected resistance, but it was too intense, too structured. There were men and women pulling strings behind the scenes. There was an organization to the rebels they fought.

Karai heard rumors. Green-skinned animal men who fought like demons and left none of the Shredder's men alive in their wake. A woman who gathered survivors together and made them into soldiers. Her father heard the rumors too. Something would be done. Soon.

But first there was the town. Just like so many others. They defied her father, and his will must be obeyed.

Her ninja gathered the people of the town together on the soccer field of the local high school. The children were separated from their parents and taken to the center of the field.

Karai ordered one child killed for every minute the villagers refused to name the rebel leader.

The rebel leader had no name, no real name at least, but Karai had convinced the townspeople to tell her what they did know. Her father was satisfied with that. It was not as if he didn't already know exactly who they were looking for.

"You have done well," he informed her, barely looking up from the schematics Chaplin had delivered earlier. A new design for the spacecraft they were building.

"I am your obedient daughter," Karai said.

That night she sat awake and traced the names of nineteen children against the wall of her room until her finger was rubbed raw and bleeding.

* * *

Karai was expecting April O'Neil. Instead she got the masked vigilante who had so infuriated Hun. Casey Jones was older than last she saw him, but she supposed he would say the same of her.

Discovering who was leading the rebels in New York was one thing, finding her was proving to be something else entirely. The O'Neil woman had never been an easy target, even before the war.

Karai gave the order for the man to be taken alive. She made sure he heard her, wanting him to know what was in store for him.

It would prove to be a serious misjudgment.

She had not expected the vigilante to choose death before capture. Always Leonardo's Clan had clung to life, even in the face of defeat. Staring powerlessly down at the man's dead body, Karai began to wonder when exactly that had changed.

She new the answer even then but did not dwell on her part in it.

She sent her ninja to search the area, but if any of the vigilante's friends had been nearby, they had fled at his capture. A wasted mission and with Jones' death O'Neil and the Turtles would be twice as careful.

They were also twice as vengeful, as attack after attack was launched against her father's forces in the weeks following Jones' death. Karai faced her father, grim and ashamed, as reports came in of explosions in secure buildings, of caravans attacked and raided, of guards killed and scientists kidnapped.

Her father was furious in a way he rarely was toward her. "Had I wanted my enemies to know my plans," he hissed, his eyes dark with displeasure, "I would have sent them a note. I expect better of my daughter, Karai."

She bowed her head, tried not to wonder if Leonardo would choose death on the day she finally faced him again. "I am your obedient daughter. Tell me what I must do to atone for this."

"Bring me one of the Turtles," her father commanded. "Too long have they run amok in my city. End it for me, Karai."

She did not meet his eyes.

* * *

It was Raphael she finally found.

She was glad, in some distant, detached part of herself, that it was not Leonardo. She was not entirely certain what she would have done then. She did not think she could have defeated him alone, and she did not think he would have stayed to fight when she had backup. But Raphael rarely ran from a fight, even when outnumbered. Karai and her ninja brought the Turtle to the ground two days after they first attacked, their number halved. Karai wiped blood out of her eyes and caught her breath while one of her men secured the Turtle's bonds.

Animal tranquilizers, she thought grimly. He'd have evaded them for good if she hadn't brought the tranquilizer guns. It felt like a hollow victory, not to be able to bring him down through combat alone.

But she had spent more than three years tracking the Turtles. Eluding the Foot had been their strongest directive for most of their lives; they knew how to hide from her better than she knew how to hunt them. But she had tricks of her own, and Raphael was known for an impetuousness that often overruled his better judgment.

And now she had one of her father's most hated enemies to present to him upon his return.

Karai watched her ninja prepare the Turtle for transport back to her father's headquarters and waited to feel something like accomplishment or pride.

With her father overseas, securing the Foot's recent conquests in the Asian continent, Karai was left in charge of the New York base. As such, that meant the Turtle was her responsibility until the Lord Shredder's return. She watched him through the video feeds in his cell and planned what it would take to break him.

She oversaw his interrogation personally.

It wasn't that he would not speak; on the contrary, by the end she would have given anything to make him _stop _talking. But he did not tell her what she wanted to hear. Instead he spat her failures in her face, lists of names, towns that still defied her father, countries that had so far pushed back the tide of invasion. Men and women who had joined the resistance. He growled Stockman's name like a curse and laughed over Hun's defection. He named her successes; the towns she had ordered destroyed, the men she had ordered executed.

"Perhaps we need show our prisoner that we are serious," Karai suggested. "Doctor, give him a sign he cannot ignore."

The doctor raised a brow in her direction. "A hand, perhaps?"

"I think not," Karai said, noting that the Turtle looked neither surprised nor scared. "Take an eye."

Two days later she visited him again. A bloodied bandage was wrapped around his eye – she had ordered that he was not to be allowed to die, but little other medical care had been taken. He greeted her with a smirk and the remaining eye narrowed thoughtfully.

He spoke a name. Karai clenched her fist and walked away.

He listed eighteen more behind her. She left him to the interrogators.

He did not break. She, perhaps, did.

* * *

Her father was not inclined to forgive her failure to break Raphael. Karai knelt before her father's dais as he derided her inability to get the information her father wanted. Raphael was a prize, but it was Leonardo her father had grown to hate and the O'Neil woman who was pulling the rebels' strings. They were the ones to be stopped.

Karai bowed her head and remembered Raphael's eyes, how they didn't waver when she ordered one to be cut out. She remembered a prisoner more than ten years ago, who had not flinched as she took his life.

* * *

It took more than twenty years, but her father's rule was secured. Pockets of resistance still existed and likely would for some time to come. Karai was a student of history. Tyranny produced rebellion. Her father would never be free of opposition, but he could crush it easily enough.

His scientists and the captured Utrom slaved away in the Shredder's labs, creating the Transmat device which would soon be ready to teleport his armies to the Utrom homeworld where he would finally have his revenge against those who had stranded him on Earth so many centuries ago.

Karai kept her eyes open. She watched and waited, gathering information and rumor. Leonardo had been involved in the raid that had freed his brother from her hold, but left New York soon after. He had gone south, to Virginia – there had been strong pockets of military resistance there and Leonardo had gone as the O'Neil woman's emissary to organize them. He had never come back. There were rumors of an explosion, that Leonardo had vanished from the battlefield for months after only to reappear blind and scarred. Karai made note of the rumors but did not bring herself to believe them.

Raphael left the city and she lost track of him. Attacks out west soon increased in effectiveness and viciousness and Karai suspected Raphael's hand in it all. She sent spies, but they did not return.

Michelangelo stayed. Karai caught sight of him once or twice. He crossed her personal guard in battle once, leaving her short two kunoichi but costing him one arm. Karai did not consider it a fair exchange.

The O'Neil woman remained a shadow. Karai was beginning to suspect she was dead, that the resistance was using her memory to control the rebels.

And then things got strange.

* * *

"Donatello." Karai's voice was brittle to her own ears and the jounin who knelt before her paled visibly but did not flinch. "You are _certain_?"

"Mistress," the boy said. "He was not any of the other three. Unless one of them has a child we know nothing of it must be Donatello."

Karai drummed her fingers against the arm of her chair. The possibility of a child was one she hadn't considered; she mentally made a note to commend the boy for thoroughness. But she found it unlikely. Biology aside, she didn't think there was any way they could have hidden such a thing from her spies.

But Donatello? It was beyond preposterous, it was downright impossible. "I don't suppose he mentioned where he has been these last few decades," Karai mocked.

The boy bowed his head. "Michelangelo did not seem pleased to see him."

Indeed. She knew the Turtles considered their brother dead and had for many years; after thirty years there was very little else for them to think, after all. Exactly what had happened to the fourth Turtle was not known to them – at least, not as far as Karai could tell, and she had watched for some sign, these long years. But for him to suddenly appear out of nowhere… "Young, you say?"

"I suppose, Mistress." The boy sounded uncertain. "Compared to Michelangelo he seemed younger. That's why I thought perhaps a son."

"You did not hear him addressed?"

"No, Mistress. I am sorry. I was caught by surprise and wounded. When Michelangelo spoke to the newcomer, I was too far away to hear their conversation."

Unfortunate. A name would make things so much clearer. Karai waved the boy away. "To the infirmary. I will tell your teachers you have done well."

The boy bowed low, relief and pride clear in his eyes. Karai pitied him for it.

"Donatello, hmm?" Karai frowned out the window at the grey sky. "I do not like the possibilities before me." Her kunoichi waited silently. "We still have the defense sensors set up in the Turtle's old lair?"

"Yes, Mistress."

"I want them immediately. Bring them to me at once. And contact Doctor Chaplin. I want an update on the progress with the Transmat device."

"Yes, Mistress."

Two of her warriors slipped away to do her bidding, while a third activated the communication monitor on the wall opposite Karai's chair.

Chaplin's face appeared on-screen, weathered and scarred, one eye covered with a black eyepatch decorated with a skull and crossbones. He seemed surprised to see her. "Mistress Karai," he greeted her formally. "How may I serve you?"

She could remember a time when he had smiled at her like a little boy. So very long ago. "Doctor, a report on the Transmat's progress."

"We've completed construction and testing on schedule," Chaplin reported. "Right now we're cleaning up and making the necessary calibration changes. We should be ready to begin receiving troops inside the next forty-eight hours."

"I will deliver this news to my father personally." Karai met his gaze impassively and Chaplin grinned a little as he recognized her comment for the fair warning it was.

"We are prepared to serve our Lord Shredder," Chaplin declared. "Within two days, the universe will be his."

"Karai out."

Her warriors returned quickly and presented her with the disk containing the recent footage from the Turtle's destroyed lair. Karai gestured, and her kunoichi inserted the disk into her communication monitor. She set the device to scan and the minutes flashed by quickly. She did not stop it until she saw movement on the screen.

"Well," Karai said. "Donatello indeed."

She dismissed her kunoichi as she made her way to her father's sitting room. She had much to think on. Surely this Donatello, unchanged for thirty years, had to be a time traveler or perhaps – could he be a clone? Stockman had served the resistance for some years now, and though his expertise had always been robotics, surely it was possible he had picked up some tricks from Bishop? A clone of the original Donatello would explain a great deal. But Karai could not see Leonardo allowing such a thing.

Well, it was not as if Stockman had ever concerned himself with asking permission when he still served her father. Doubtless he afforded the Turtles even less respect. But why would he create such a clone? To unsettle her father? Shredder did not know Donatello's fate any more than his brothers did, though the other Turtles had never believed him innocent in their brother's disappearance. For thirty years, she knew, her father had been half expecting Donatello's return.

Karai approached her father's dais, he took audiences from behind a delicate screen these days, a further means of separating him from those who served him.

She knelt on one knee and bent her head. Her silver hair fell forward to frame her face. "My lord. I bring news."

Her father's voice emanated from behind the screen like the low rumblings of an earthquake. "Speak, Karai."

"Our enforcers were involved in a skirmish near the Turtles' old lair. Sensors have identified the attacker. It is the turtle Donatello."

"So," her father said, interest making his voice only slightly softer, "the prodigal son has returned. Excellent. I want Donatello's head brought before me. With or without his body."

Karai bowed her head. "I am your obedient servant," she said. "I will bring Donatello to you."

_Perhaps_, Karai thought as she backed away from the Shredder's dais, _perhaps with his body attached._

* * *

Her spies searched the city day and night, combing the sewers, raiding every known resistance hideout. She had prisoners questioned, ordered the jounin to review security feeds, and set every available ninja to the task of finding Donatello.

He remained a ghost.

Somehow, Karai was not surprised.

* * *

Karai approaches her father's dais for the last time. She bows, but does not kneel.

The Transmat is nearly ready. Soon her father will leave this world for others unimaginable to her and Karai will be left here, sole guardian of her master's sovereignty on a planet he had never really wanted to rule. A broken, barren world where nothing grew, and every resource was given over to building her father's army. This is the legacy her father has always intended for her. To be the sole inheritor of her father's cast-offs and discarded interests.

She feels the ground shake, and is not surprised. She had seen the device on the security feeds the day before, when Donatello had returned to the lair with his brothers. She had the feeds run through to her monitor – no other would be watching as Donatello reunited his brothers and began to construct what could only be a weapon for a final assault against her father.

It is possible, Karai thinks, that she had always known it would take the four of them to defeat the Lord Shredder.

She turns as the machine breaks through the floor into her father's throne room, draws her weapon in preparation. Behind her, the Shredder expresses his outrage in a furious voice. Karai watches the door open and almost, almost laughs when Michelangelo appears.

Then Leonardo, his eyes hidden, his face scarred. So the rumors there were true. And Raphael, no more broken now than he had been in her captivity all those years before.

Then the fourth appears. And he is younger – it's easier to see in person than on the security feeds. His skin is unmarked by time, his eyes are clear, his body whole. And the exosuit he wears is very, very obviously the husk of one of Chaplin's Karaibots.

Irony, Karai thinks, that her father is to be undone in her own image, when it is her image he used to conquer.

Donatello smirks at her and his eyes hold her gaze. "Can the Shredder come out and play?" he taunts.

The ground trembles as her father stands and Karai carefully moves aside to allow The Shredder and the Turtles to face one another directly. The screens are pulled aside and her father appears, hulking, monstrous, _alien_. "So. The Turtles are reunited." He spreads his robotic arms, baring the blades built into his exosuit. "It is thirty years overdue but I will finally put an end to your pathetic lives."

The Turtles remain ever unimpressed. "Shredder!" Donatello shouts. "Your reign of terror is _over_!"

Definitely younger, Karai thinks. She raises her voice to be heard over the mutual posturing. "Legions! Attack!"

There are eight Karaibots in the throne room – six of her father's gold royal guard, and the two silver guardians that are her own assigned protectors. Their programming had been activated as soon as the intruders arrived – her orders are superfluous. They circle the Turtles – only Donatello seems at all interested in them. "Destroy them all!" she demands and her father chuckles low, content to let the Karaibots do the fighting.

Foolish, Karai cannot help but think. Arrogant. The Turtles have spent thirty years turning Legions of the Karaibots to scrap metal. Eight of them will only slow them down.

And she is correct. Donatello opens with a hail of machine gun fire, cutting the bots down in their place. One of her Silver guard manages to get behind him and Karai watches, curious to see what happens.

The robot is destroyed by rocket fire. Karai narrows her eyes as a figure appears in the entrance to the Turtles attack vehicle, a rocket launcher cradled in her arms. The O'Neil woman is alive after all.

And _Hun_, Karai now sees, wasted, bloated and pale, strapped into the chair her father had condemned him to, Stockman's containment jar still drawing life from Hun's own ruined body. She cannot help but watch in shock as Hun wheels himself to her father's feet and begs to be allowed to serve once more. She turns away as her father ends them both.

To her left, the three elder Turtles are surrounded by the surviving Karaibots. Even as she watches, they are separated.

Michelangelo's voice burns in her ears as the Legions cut him down. She gags, even as she raises her sword in defense for the attack she knows is coming.

Donatello goes straight for her father, cutting down another of the Karaibots in his path. He, she knows, is the main threat. He is what brought the others here today and he, in his exo-suit, is the only one who might stand a chance of meeting her father in single combat. A Karaibot is nothing to her father's own exo-suit, but Karai believes that Donatello has a plan.

Machine gun fire cuts through the air and her father's form is clouded in a haze of gunsmoke. Karai watches carefully from her place near her father's dais as Donatello holds his fire and waits.

Her father does not disappoint; he bursts from the smoke like a creature in a horror movie and seizes Donatello's exosuit in two of his arms. "Thirty years," her father taunts as he rips Donatello's suit apart around him, "and this is all you have?" For a moment Karai thinks her father is about to kill him outright and she tenses on the balls of her feet, but The Shredder only throws Donatello aside, like a broken toy. "Disgusting creature!"

Leonardo's shout of worry brings her into the battle at last. This is her place.

She shouts as she draws her weapon and attacks, she can tell the exact moment when Leonardo realizes she is coming for him. He meets her sword with her own, his precision eerie when she knows he cannot see her. "I beg you," she says, meaning it more than she has ever meant anything. "Leave this place. Or you will force me to do that which my duty commands."

He hits the wall hard and lands on his knees, already shaking his head. "Not this time, Karai. This time you have to make a choice."

But she _has_. And can't he finally see that?

Or perhaps, Karai realizes as he attacks. Perhaps it is not so much the choice Leonardo wants her to face, but her reasons for making it.

_It is not what I have done that angers you, is it, Leonardo? Rather why I have done it._

She wants to tell him she understands. She wants to tell him that is the very thing that angers her as well.

He meets her charge head on and deflects her attack with the severed arm of one of her silver guards. A kick catches her in the stomach and before she can get her breath back he has her thrown. She hits the ground face first and even as she struggles to rise she can hear the sound of his blade. "I'm sorry, Karai. I never wanted it to be this way."

She believes him. But she never had any intention of giving him any other choice.

The silver legion appears behind him as he raises his weapon to finish her but almost before she realizes what is happening, he turns to attack the robot, leaving his back unguarded.

_Not what I have done_, Karai thinks as she rises to her feet. _But why I have done it_. Her sword is in her hand. If she meets Leonardo one more time she will not win. And this is the last thing she will do for her father.

She cuts him down from behind like an assassin. Leonardo staggers, as if his body has not yet realized it is dead.

Karai imagines she has met Leonardo's eyes one last time. She remembers the passion, the fury the determination in those eyes from former battles, from the City War, from Beijing, when he tried so desperately to show her another way.

Eyes, she thinks as she watches Leonardo drop to his knees, that were the same color as the helpless prisoner in Bishop's lab more than twenty five years ago. That was the moment, she can see it now. The moment she truly became her father's servant. He had been an innocent, undeserving of his fate. Even then she had known that, had seen it. He had been an innocent and she had never considered setting him free.

She had killed for her father before. She had slain soldiers in battle, assassinated politicians and leaders, executed criminals and traitors. But that was the first time she had ever murdered.

Leonardo falls.

Karai can hear the noise grow from below. The security programs she overrode will be activating and her ninja will find themselves trapped between the rebels and their own defenses. Her clan cannot escape. They will be captured, killed. They cannot come to her aid.

She and her father are trapped in this room with their greatest and most dangerous enemies. They will not leave this room alive.

The Lord Shredder will fall this day. That will be her legacy. Whether anyone knows it or not.

Raphael comes for her. Karai goes to meet his vengeance willingly.

c&c always appreciated.


End file.
